Water management strategies in times of global change need to be developed within a complex and uncertain environment. Scenarios are often used to deal with uncertainty. A novel backcasting methodology has been tested in which a normative objective (e.g. adaptive water management) is backcasted...

This paper presents a game-theoretic rationale for the beneficial effect of a common enemy on cooperation. In a defence game against a common natural threat, the value of the public good of defence is equal to the sum of the players’ defensive efforts. The game therefore takes the form of...

A number of experimental studies have investigated whether cooperative behavior may emerge in multi-agent Q-learning. In some studies cooperative behavior did emerge, in others it did not. This report provides a theoretical analysis of this issue. The analysis focuses on multi-agent Q-learning...

A recent line of research in economics and psychology hypothesizes that differences in national average intelligence, proxied by IQ tests, are important drivers of national economic outcomes. Cross-country regressions, while showing a robust IQ-growth relationship, cannot fully test this...

Models based on agents has been widely used to study the paradigmatic emergence of cooperation in social systems. In the Spatial Prisoners' Dilemma game introduced by Martin Nowak and Robert May, the agents are greedy and imitate indiscriminately the action of the wealthiest neighbor. Other...

The author developed a simple computer program for the in-class simulation of the repeated prisoner’s dilemma game with student-designed strategies. He describes the basic features of the software and presents two examples for the use of the program in teaching the problems of cooperation...

This study presents an analytical model of budget allocation into military and civilian expenditures within an arms race between two rival countries and compares the consequences of shortsighted (period-by-period) planning versus forward-looking (long-term) planning. The authors show that...